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Esoteric Ritual in Graciela Maria’s “Black Lament”

Earlier this month, we introduced you to Project: Mooncircle’s singer-songwriter Graciela Maria. Talented and introspective, Graciela Maria captivated Why Blue Matters with her soulful delivery in recent single “From Others“. Today, we resuscitate her name with the release of her latest music video, “Black Lament”. Laden with the weight of Graciela’s confessional lyrics, “Black Lament” is an inescapable artwork of symbolism, contemplation and simplicity of great power.

With the first turn of her head through the static-drowned screen, our heroine sinks into the accusatory stance of an artist’s Muse, caught in the limbo between awareness of self and of us who observe her. She pauses, it seems, long enough to separate her thoughts once more from the critical or curious world around her, drifting into her vocal delivery.

The piano that drips with a hovering tempo meets with unexpectedly symbolic imagery. At first, the hand that grips a piece of chalk alludes to the slipper of a ballerina, taut in disciplined position and tracing warily a path across her stage. Is it balance she seeks? An almost exhibitionary display of drawing up the wrist sinks into a proclamation of “I will only hurt you because I love you so” as the dark trace contrasts ominously against her bare arm.

A cloaked figure, a classical cult symbol, stands poised in a church-like attic, the horror-tinged video fluttering with recognition as we step closer to a silhouette who has by all appearances been expecting us. Or is it through the eyes of our protagonist that we are seeing this approach?

Don’t ask me why I’m here.

Don’t ask me why I’m here.

Could you believe me?

The ritualistic undertones of Graciela Maria’s “Black Lament” now relieve themselves of secrecy, becoming an overt play on occult rites of passage. Is it pretense that flickers over the gaze of our protagonist as she wraps the eyes of her doppelganger? Most likely, she has ripped herself into shards of herself, each aspect passing through the motions of a scripted act.

Catching the emptiness that follows the soar of Graciela’s voice, the chalk cord that stretches over her skin is white, no longer dark like tainted blood that needed to be drawn. Is she pulling this energy across her body, tightening it like an arrow in its bow? And where would it go? She draws, with a feigned precision, a diagram that makes no meaningful connections, behind a blindfold that shields her from no-one. Alternately, she gazes from behind a single patch of feather across her right eye, forced to see from the left, sectioning her body into the rational and emotional.

Down again the vocals slip, and we see the calm of a certain transcendence. Is it a spiritual or material crown she places upon her head? Both eyes are now opened and piercing once more our own, which have until this moment, all but forgotten her early acknowledgement.

We are left with nothing more than the cryptic aura of the video and a feeling of dis-ease. Now that our passive observation has been deeply and fully recognized twice, now that we have stepped into her occult world, and watched the baring of her soul and sacrament, what are we to make of her parting gaze?